1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to multimedia. In particular, the invention relates to a system and method for providing functionalities to a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS).
2. Description of Related Art
Currently, if additional functionalities are being added to the system BIOS, significant changes have to be implemented. In particular, the system BIOS code has to be significantly revised.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide additional functionalities to system BIOS without having to significantly alter the system BIOS code. There is also a further need in the industry to provide and display system device information simply and efficiently.
In addition, information regarding system devices such as processor performance information and memory size information, is traditionally displayed in textual format. Such system device information is typically determined at the time of manufacture. During the boot process, the system device information determined at the time of manufacture is detected and/or retrieved by the system BIOS and displayed in textual format. Such information is difficult to view as the user has to sort through lines of text to locate the desired information.
There is thus a further need in the industry to provide and display system device information simply and efficiently.
The present invention is a method and apparatus to provide functionalities to a system BIOS. The method comprises interfacing an interface module to the system BIOS, and receiving a request from the system BIOS to perform a task. System device information associated with the task is received from the system BIOS. The interface module translates the system device information to provide translated information. The translated information is then transferred to a corresponding module.